CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Preparing the Valley for War
ARi and I sat on the outer lip of the keep with our legs hanging over the side.
The stone beneath me still held some of the day’s heat, though the air had cooled as the sun dropped toward the savannah. Wind moved across the top of the keep, carrying woodsmoke from the camps below.
ARi sat beside me with her heels resting against the outside wall. She had her hands braced on the stone on either side of her, her hair moving slightly in the breeze as she looked out over everything she’d done.
The walls she’d raised stretched far beyond the original footprint of the keep. They wrapped around the ground where the kobold legions had made their camps, enclosing a huge section of the savannah in a protective sweep of stone and bronze.
The smooth walls caught the last of the sun and held it in a warm dull shine. Inside the walls, she’d cleared enough ground for the airships. A massive cobblestone landing area filled the open space below, laid out in long straight sections with markings worked into the stone for approach lanes, unloading zones, and supply routes. Even from the top of the keep, I could see how carefully it had been designed. There were open corridors between the landing field and the storage areas, space for the kobold legions to move without blocking each other, and broad cleared paths leading back toward the keep itself.
The tether towers stood around the landing ground like huge stone monoliths. They rose well above the walls, thick and square, with bronze-banded anchor housings near their tops and recessed channels cut down their sides. One of the massive airships had already been sent back to Meilun, while the other two ships now sat on the ground, neatly adjacent to each other in the new yard.
Fires burned across the camps below in rows and clusters, small orange points spread across the enclosed plain.
“You seem really distant tonight,” I said as I pulled her closer.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this,” she said, leaning into me. “All of this feels so…”
“Big,” I finished for her.
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about it. We’re going to meet with the captains of the airships and the legion commanders from Meilun soon. I noticed you’ve been doing your best to avoid them,” I said with a chuckle.
“It’s not funny, Gavin. Having them treat me like some kind of deity is worse than when everybody was treating me like a princess.”
“I was talking with Tim and Kyle yesterday,” I said as I glanced back out to watch the last of the sun dip below the horizon. “There really is no limit to our progression, is there? This thing that the Ascendancy has done to us, I don’t think it ever stops.”
“It’s not supposed to work that way, is it?” I asked, looking back to her.
“No, it’s not,” she said, without any further explanation.
We sat in the quiet for a moment.
“ARi, what happens when this competition is over? I understand that even the Ascended can’t directly interfere while it’s happening, but I don’t think they’re going to leave us be, you know?”
She took a deep breath and looked back at me with a sad smile.
“Gav, they weren’t going to leave us alone regardless. I’m afraid war was coming. It was inevitable.”
I stood up, brushed the dust from my pants, and reached down for her hand.
“Well then, Princess ARi, goddess of the kobolds, let’s go have a sit-down with our generals.”
She took my hand and let me help her up, scoffing at me.
“That’s not funny, Gavin!”
“It’s a little funny.”
She pouted and followed me back down the stairs toward the den.
We made our way back down into the lower level, and as we walked toward the circular hearth to meet the others, ARi suddenly stopped. Her eyes went wide.
Tanya caught it before I did, and I turned around just as ARi fell to her knees, tears freely making tracks down her cheeks.
“What’s wrong?” I said, rushing back to her.
I could see that she was reading some kind of system window. Her eyes looked distant, and her mouth opened just slightly.
The others rushed to her side as well.
“ARi, what’s wrong? What is it?”
She looked back up to me and crumbled into my chest, burying her face. I held her for a minute while she caught her breath.
“ARi, you don’t have to say anything. Just show us,” Tim pleaded.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “These are battle reports from Earth. There are so many. Hundreds of them, and I just got them all at once. So many died, Gavin.”
She was sobbing when she said it.
“Who are they?” I asked. “Who died?”
She tried to steady herself before finally lifting her hand and throwing a projection across the adjacent wall.
The projection spread across the wall, and for a few seconds, I couldn’t make sense of what I was looking at.
The report kept scrolling. New lines appeared faster than I could read them, each one recording another piece of the fighting on Earth. I caught Seattle first, then Portland, Los Angeles, New York, London, and Tokyo before the list kept going.
“It’s a battle report,” I said, and my stomach tightened.
“Gavin, this fight was…” Tim’s voice fell off.
“It’s global,” Yumi said. “It’s showing cities and population centers all over the world.”
While the rest of us stood there trying to understand what we were seeing, Tanya was the first one to realize what had crushed ARi.
The losses listed different types of constructs. Familiar names like ARi’s Revenge moved past us, and there was even some kind of construct they’d named “Wait Until My Sister Comes Home.” Worse than the constructs were the names of ARi’s sisters. Hundreds of them. They’d apparently continued Roslyn’s trend and started naming themselves after cities and regions.
The list kept scrolling for several minutes before it finally stopped.
[SYSTEM WINDOW] Combat Report
OUTCOME: Victory
Operation Rosalind’s Fury has successfully defeated invading forces across all populated continental regions.
Estimated survivors recovered: 18,742,913.
Friendly AI instances lost: 1,284.
Friendly constructs destroyed: 86,419.
“ARi,” I said. “What about Roslyn?”
ARi sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeve before taking a quick, sharp breath and pulling herself together. She let Tanya help her sit up.
“Roslyn is fine,” she said. “Her name’s not on the list. Besides, I’m pretty sure at this point the only one who can hurt Roslyn is me. But Gavin, by altering Roslyn’s code so that none of the other sisters she created could protect themselves the same way…”
“ARi, don’t you dare,” Tanya snapped.
“She’s right, ARi,” Kyle said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “That’s not on you. And if your sisters put themselves that fight to protect the innocent, you shouldn’t take their sacrifice away from them, okay? Eighteen million people, ARi. They saved eighteen million people.”
“I think the scariest thing about all of that, you guys, is that when this all started, there were over eight billion of us,” Tim said.
“Architect, may I say something?” a voice cut in from behind us.
We stopped and turned to find Red and Charlie, along with a whole room full of our cohorts and leaders from Meilun.
Charlie walked over and knelt down in front of ARi, gently taking her hand.
“Ward, these numbers don’t speak of all the people who would’ve sought shelter before the fighting started. Your sisters most certainly saved many more than that.”
He stopped for a moment, looking down at the floor before looking back up to meet her eyes.
“They’ve taken much from both of our worlds. But for the first time, we’re actually able to fight back.”
Red moved over and knelt next to Charlie, lowering himself to meet her where she was.
“Ward, I’m truly sorry for your loss. It breaks our hearts to see you weep for your own, as I’ve witnessed you weep for ours so many times.”
The two kobolds reached out, took ARi’s hands, and helped her to her feet.
ARi looked around and found the den packed with concerned cohorts and kobolds alike.
“You know,” another voice cut in, “it was really hard to see because it was moving so fast, but how many of those fucks did Roslyn and your sisters put down?”
ARi managed a small smile.
“A lot of them,” she said, almost a whisper.
“Damn right she did.” Erica chimed in with an impish grin. “Let’s get this meeting started. I’m ready to find my brothers and put boot to ass myself!”
The room erupted into cheers, and I reached out and wiped the last of the tears and dust tracks from ARi’s cheek with my sleeve.
“Thanks, Gav.”
She raised her hand, and the inside of the den changed around us. The hearth and stone benches moved closer to an adjacent wall, fading out and fading back without the light so much as flickering. Three long tables with benches down either side now filled the room, covered with refreshments and steins.
I walked over and threw my own projection on the wall, showing a map of everything we’d been able to scout.
The map filled the wall in front of us, spreading across the stone in shades of red and clean black lines.
The territory I had claimed for Earth and the keep sat on the eastern side of the river, marked near the edge of the grass plains. The map had updated since the last time I’d seen it, and now showed the new walls and layout. South of us, the river split apart into the swamplands where Hannah had first spawned. West of that, the land curved out toward a long sandy coastline and the sea beyond it. Farther west, past the beach and the lower stretches of the river, lay the Meilun Valley and the city of Meilun itself.
But for this gathering, the mountains and the pass to the north had our attention.
I pointed to the mouth of Ridgeline Pass. “This is where the first stop needs to be.”
The projection tightened around the pass as I spoke, and ARi highlighted the western side of the river near the opening.
“Meilun’s Second Legion will establish an outpost here,” I said. “Both airships are going to stop and establish fortifications before we go any further. I know that wasn’t the original plan, but my instincts are telling me this entrance to Ridgeline Pass is going to be our version of the Hot Gates if things go badly.”
“Ah, Leonidas and the brave three hundred!” one of the legion commanders said as he raised his stein. “I like this. It’s a strong strategy.”
“Exactly,” I said, surprised at the local kobold’s knowledge of Earth’s history.
“After talking with the airship captains, I’ve been told the envelopes on the airships won’t be able to carry us all the way through the pass. To be honest, I’m not quite sure we’ll even be able to stay above the canyon the whole way through.”
“Yes, but the Hugo is a fighting ship, Architect. Many kobolkai and beasts have learned that the hard way!”
ARi reached over and squeezed my hand when she heard the name of the airship.
The rest of us couldn’t help but smile.
“And I’m sure it’s a lucky ship with such a name,” ARi said, nodding at the captain.
I raised my hands to quiet the room again. “Listen up, everybody. I’m not questioning the courage or ability of anyone in this room. I know the original plan was to fly the Hugo through the canyon, and when the air got too thin for it to stay aloft, the ship was going to wait there for us to return. I also don’t mean to undermine the leadership of Meilun for planning this. They didn’t have all of the information we have now.”
“We’re changing the plan,” ARi said. “The Hugo will fly and escort us as far as the ship can go, but as soon as the air becomes too thin for it to effectively fight, we unload the supplies and the legion, and the ship will go back to the mouth of the pass.”
The captain of the Hugo stood up defiantly, ready to plead his case.
But ARi simply walked over and sat next to him on the long bench as the other two captains made room for her.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Lucilius, Ward,” he said, bowing his head.
“What a beautiful name. Do you know where it comes from?” ARi asked, and I could tell by the gleam in her eye that she was already pulling the information up.
“Yes, Ward. It comes from the Roman culture of Earth.”
“It comes from the same root as lux, from a language we call Latin. It means light. I like that too,” she said, smiling softly at the captain. “Captain Lux, how many airships are combat ready in this valley right now?”
“As of now, there are eight, Ward.”
She looked at the other captains at the table. “Captain Ceylon, when will your ship return to the keep?”
“Within five days, Ward.”
She stood back up and walked over to the map. She raised her hand and highlighted the savannah and Meilun Valley.
“To the best of our knowledge, this valley contains the last population of the Kobold Empire,” she said.
Then she pointed to the projection of the battle report from Earth on the far wall.
“I want to be optimistic and agree with my fellow champions that my sister was able to safeguard the majority of Earth’s population. But I don’t have that luxury. The truth is that our world and your world now hold the future of our civilizations in this valley and in the facilities underneath the cities on Earth.
“By now, you’ve all realized that I don’t like being looked at like I’m some kind of deity. But your culture knows better than ours just how powerful the Ascended are. I may not rival them now, but at some point, I will. The rest of Earth’s champions will too. So will the Spirit-born…”
She looked back to Tim and me, still standing at the front of the room next to the map, and Tim nodded.
“But that’s not who we are. Not now anyway. If I could wave my hand and safeguard all of our people, I’d do it without hesitation. But I can’t. So we’ll have to fight. And we don’t have the luxury of throwing your precious lives away, Lux.”
“If the cost of victory is blood, we need to spend it wisely,” Red cut in.
Captain Lux bowed his head slightly at ARi. “What would you have us do, Ward?”
“Take us as far as you can up the canyon. Once your ship is no longer able to fight in the air, we’ll disembark and march.”
I pointed at the map, back at the mouth of the pass. “Captain Lux, you’ll join Captain Rivers at the new fortification and keep anything from getting into the valley.”
“Captain Ceylon, you’ll return to Meilun. I need you to take the representatives back so they can prepare the city for war.”
“Chancellor Tenzin,” ARi said, looking to the city’s representatives at the front of the table, the Chancellor stood up, shocked at hearing her say his name. “what does the city need to build more of these airships and further fortify the valley?”
“Ward, Meilun has many sons and daughters trained and prepared to fight, but I’m afraid we’ve depleted our metal reserves. The raw resources we do have take a very long time to smelt and refine.”
ARi’s eyes went distant for a moment before she suddenly stumbled, catching herself on the table as Tim and I raced to her side.
“ARi, what did you do?” Tanya said, racing over.
She smiled up at her. “I pulled a Gavin.”
We helped her down carefully to the floor, where she sat, still weak. The whole room broke into worried motion around us.
“It’s all right, everybody. She’s okay. Give her some room,” Tanya said.
“I don’t understand,” the Chancellor said. “What just happened?”
“Outside the walls of Meilun, I just placed over a hundred thousand metric tons of refined copper, tin, titanium, and bronze. I’ve also sent the mining equipment we use to gather many of those resources underneath this very keep to start pulling the resources you weren’t able to get to from beneath the city. They’ll replenish the stockpile as you use it.”
She pointed again to the battle report on the wall.
“Chancellor, Earth isn’t contested yet. It’s supposed to be under the protections of the Ascendancy, and look what they’ve done. I’ve also added plans for new weapons development and the means by which we’ll achieve it. I’m afraid we won’t be able to use it any time soon, though. In fact, I’m not sure the Ascendancy competition will let me or the champions use it at all.”
“But as we learned with the kobolkai, we’re not restricted from sharing knowledge so that you can do it yourselves.”
“What did you give them?” Yumi asked, settling onto the floor next to ARi.
“I gave them the energy beam tech those bipedal constructs were using on Earth.”
Kyle spat his drink across the table as he started laughing. I couldn’t help but smile either.
“There’s more, though,” ARi said as she took Yumi’s hand and pulled herself up to her feet. “I just leveled up. Twice.”
